Boston Globe April 30, 2003
US troops face dilemma in controlling armed citizens
By Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON -- The bloody clash Monday between US troops and gun-wielding civilians west of Baghdad illustrates the challenges facing coalition troops as they try to secure a country that is flush with firearms and where many potential opponents do not fit neatly into categories of good or bad guys, US military officials and specialists said yesterday.
US commanders said they would dispatch up to 4,000 additional military police and infantrymen to the Baghdad area to train residents and create patrols around the city. Thousands of new Iraqi police officers are being paid $20 each.
But the political vacuum created by the fall of the Saddam Hussein government three weeks ago has made it difficult for US and allied troops to convince residents they are there to protect them. The shootings Monday in the town of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, involved members of the Army's 82d Airborne Division who say they acted in self-defense after protesters fired AK-47s in their direction. Returning fire, the American troops killed at least 13 Iraqis, including children, and injured scores more, hospital officials said.
Military officials said they are rushing in reinforcements to help train local volunteers to reestablish a civilian police force in the city, acknowledging that the estimated 12,000 US troops now in Baghdad are not sufficient to tamp down the lawlessness.
''In the coming two weeks, an additional 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers will move into the city to help us help you,'' Major Genernal Glenn Webster, the deputy commander of US ground forces, told a town meeting yesterday in Baghdad.
In the past three weeks, looters have pillaged government offices, robbed homes, stores, and businesses and burned buildings. Sporadic gunfire has been a nightly occurrence. The chaos is not a surprise to some specialists, who question why the United States wasn't better prepared to move in quickly to stabilize the nation.
''I am surprised that we didn't see a larger prewar deployment of MP units,'' said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va., think tank. ''They should have known they were going to need every MP in the Army in Iraq.''
Some of those MPs would have come in handy in Fallujah, where the 82d Airborne troops, involved in combat just days ago, were thrust into the role of town constable. The US troops began pulling out of the town yesterday.
''It is an extremely difficult situation,'' said a senior military official. ''Soldiers have to be extremely alert in a country where weapons proliferate in all those neighborhoods, from AKs to handguns . . . When they start popping these things in the air it is difficult to know if they are celebrating or taking offensive actions.''
Providing security is viewed as the most pressing priority for US troops, who could see their military victory swiftly undone by widespread chaos in which the Iraqis conclude they are not safer than they were under Hussein's tightly controlled regime.
''I think it is a very delicate time right now in Iraq,'' said retired Army General George Joulwan, former NATO commander who oversaw the entry of US military peacekeepers into Bosnia in 1995. ''At some point you have to get control.''
But the policing function is not the US military's forte. ''It's not trained for this activity,'' said Loren Thompson, chief executive officer of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. ''Every time a civilian is killed it tends to undercut our claims. This is a central dilemma in building democracy that we have yet to find a solution to.''
US troops, however, are better prepared to deal with rioting civilians than ever before, military officials said. They are outfitted with nonlethal weapons such as high-intensity lights, pepper spray, and other riot-control gear developed since US peacekeeping initiatives in the 1990s.
But the major obstacle to security in Iraq is the abundance of weapons, analysts said. ''You still have nothing to prevent the individual citizen from carrying his Kalashnikov on the street,'' said retired Brigadier General John Reppert, executive director for research at the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center at Harvard University.
''You cannot have this wholesale bartering in arms,'' said Joulwan, who oversaw the disarmament process in Bosnia in the 1990s and the establishment of a viable civilian police force. ''Disarming the population should be job one,'' he said. ''If you don't impose your will on the enemy you just defeated, you're going to lose the peace.''
Copyright © 2003, Globe Newspaper Company
